Blogger = FAIL!

I guess my break from blogging has resulted in me missing out on some updates and changes to blogger. Needless to say I am very frustrated as I have not been able to figure out all of the changes!! What is the most frustrating is the fact that I cannot find a way to edit the font/color of my entire blog. It used to be so simple and easy... and I'd really rather stay away from dealing with html code!! But what is the most frustrating thing is that blogger refuses to keep me logged in. No matter what I do, I have to keep logging back in to my account. GRRR!!!

Holiday Recap

Now that Christmas has come and gone I finally have some free time to get back to blogging. The month of December was absolutely nutty for me. I only spent about 7 days in Raleigh!! I flew out and spent about 10 days with Ryne the week before Christmas. It was great being able to celebrate Christmas together. I am so excited and happy that this was our last holiday being apart!! Next year we will be married and we will be doing our holidays together!!

While I was out with Ryne we put up and decorated our Christmas tree together. The past few years we have picked out smaller trees that tended to have that Charlie Brown feel to them. But this year we decided to go big and ended up with a beautiful 8' tree!!

The tree was so much bigger than what we had that we barely had enough lights and we also ran short on ornaments! In fact, we had to go out and pick up a few more ornaments to add to the tree so that we could fill out the tree!! We ended up with a beautiful tree that was overflowing with presents!!



After a quick pit stop in Raleigh (I had to go back for graduation) I flew home to the Cape for Christmas with my family! I thankfully arrived a day ahead of a snow storm. Despite the fact that they were only calling for a dusting of snow, the Cape got 13" of a very HEAVY, wet snow!! It was very beautiful!!

Rob & Margaux spent with Christmas with us this year. We also had my cousins and some family friends join us on Christmas day for dinner so we had a full house. It was a wonderful day filled with lots of happy memories!!

Christmas Shopping

I do not know what it is about this year but for once I am ahead of the game. My Christmas cards arrived in the mail yesterday. All I have to do now is address them and throw them in the mail. And lucky me already has the address labels printed and ready to go (one perk about planning a wedding is that it forces you be organized!!). I am not only ahead of the game with my cards this year but I am almost done with my Christmas shopping!! Yes... you read that correctly. My Christmas shopping is more or less done!! I only have two gifts left to buy and I know exactly what they are. It's just a matter of me getting to the right store and making the purchase. And what a good feeling that is!! Of course wrapping presents is all different ball game since I will be doing Christmas in Nebraska and on the Cape. I will just have to wait to wrap the gifts at each location.

After work today, I am going to put up the garland on my front porch, hang from wreath, and put my Christmas flag out. Not very many homes in my neighborhood are decorated yet but I would like to get the outside of my house looking festive early so that I can enjoy it!!

Now that I am falling back into my blogging routine, I will start posting more regularly on my wedding plans. I was able to finalize so many of my plans over Thanksgiving so it will be fun to share and document all of our decisions and plans. Stay tuned for all of that!

Christmas Cards

For once I am actually ahead of the game with my Christmas cards! I have a bad habit of waiting until the last minute to order my cards. I am then left scrambling to get them addressed and dropped off in the mail! But this year is different! I already ordered my cards (and super cute return address labels!). While Ryne was on the Cape we had my mom take a few pictures of us. We then picked a few other pictures from the past year and picked out our Christmas card together. As I mentioned in my previous post I went with Shutterfly. I have had really good luck with their cards -- they look great and ordering cards is quick and easy! I even got my mom to order her Christmas cards this year through Shutterfly.

At first Ryne and I could not decided on the design we wanted. There are so many cute options. Some of our favorites were:


Since we couldn't decide on just one design we ordered two different cards! You will just have to wait and see which ones we went with!! I am very excited to get our cards in the mail... and for once they will be right on time!

And now that my cards are complete, I can now focus on my efforts on annual Holcomb calendar. For the past five years I have created a calendar for my parents using pictures from the Cape, our travels, and special events over the past year. I will be using Shutterfly for this project as I love how their calendars turn out!

Back in Time for the Holidays!

Wow... I cannot believe that it has been so many months since my last update. There sure have been quite a few events that have happened in the last few months!! The most exciting news is that Ryne and I got engaged in August! We are in full blown wedding mode.

Ryne and his dad are on the Cape for the week. It's been great having our two families together as we we work on our wedding plans. Today we met with the wedding coordinator at our venue, picked out the suits for the guys, and narrowed down our choices for the rehearsal dinner. It feels good to be able to check so many things off on our list!!

Tomorrow we are heading to Chatham for the day. On our list of things to see/do is to get our picture taken for our Christmas card! Once I have our picture selected I will then be able to order our cards from Shutterfly. I have ordered our cards from there for the past few years so I am super excited to get to work on our cards this year.

If you have not heard about the special offer Shutterfly is offering, be sure to check out the special offer they are offering. It's a great deal for fabulous cards!!

Now that I am in full blown wedding mode I will be updating my blog on a more regular basis. I want to document all of our plans as we get ready for our big day!

Updates Coming Soon!

I know... I am behind in blogging! I need to download a whole bunch of pictures. I also need to find some time to sit down and actually do the updating. But I promise to update on:

Christmas on the Cape
The Winter Storm
Traveling to NC with my parents
Baby Emerson
Start of Classes

So hang tight and I will try to get some updates down this weekend!

The REAL Nightmare Before Christmas

OK, so it appears I was a bit premature with my lost post. Having my flight canceled due to the snow storm turned out to be a blessing. Yesterday afternoon I was getting ready to head to a hockey game. I was actually pretty excited since it had been sooo long since I was last at a game. All of a sudden, out of no where I get this sharp pain in my lower back on the left side. I had no idea what had caused it.. all I knew was that the pain was getting worse by second. I was literally buckled over in acute pain. The best way to describe it is that it felt as if someone had stabbed me with a jagged knife and was twisting it around inside of me. The next thing I knew I was getting sick. It was at the point that I knew something was wrong. I called my parents and told them what was going on. We decided to monitor it for a little bit and see how I was feeling. I knew something was REALLY wrong when I peed blood (sorry if that is TMI). I started crying and was scared out of mind. I called my parents and decided I needed to go to the hospital. My friend Tamara came to pick me up and off we went. The entire car ride I was telling her that I did not want to wear hospital gown nor did I want to spend the night!!

I won't bore you with all of the details of my stay in the hospital but I will share these tid bits with you:

--Tamara and I entered the ER from the back which is NOT the way to go in. We got to see all of the behind the scenes including trauma and people on their death beds. Not the way you should enter an ER!!

--I got to wear a hospital gown OVER my clothes. Not sure why they made me do this but I was A-OK with that!

--I got to cruise around the joint while in my hospital bed

--EVERYONE told me that passing kidney stones would be the most painful experience EVER. Seriously, I did not need to hear that 1,000,000,000,000,000,000+ times. Seriously!

--When I had my CT Scan the lab tech told me that without moving I had to take my bra off because of the underwire. Umm... how am I to take it off without moving?!?

There is so much more I could tell you but I wont subject you to all of the fun details. In the end I was diagnosed as having two kidney stones. I think I passed the one last night and the other is still hanging out in my kidney. It was by far the WORST pain I have ever experienced and I hope I never have to experience it again. And I shudder to think what it must feel like if my stones were larger -- mine are/were 1-2mm. That's basically the size of a grain of sand. I am just praying that I did in fact pass it last night and that I am in the clear!!

On another note, I am scheduled to fly home late tomorrow night (only available flight before Christmas and I got the 2nd to last seat!). The Cape has about 18" and counting and Rob & Margaux got just shy of two feet!! Fingers crossed I can make it home tomorrow.. and that I don't experience any kidney stone attacks on my trip!